I dreamed…

30May04

“I dreamed every night since the day I turned eighteen. Most nights I remembered more that one.” The old woman said to one of the nurses.
They were in the common area of the home. A man who was visiting a relative overheard her statement. He turned to the conversation that was going on at the next table.
“Did you write them down?” ha asked.
“Still do.” She said.
“How many?”
“Oh, must be a million.”
“A million? I don’t know about that.”
She got up from her table and he followed. The nurse looked on with a mixture of concern and suspicion.
He looked in her room. There were books stacked up everywhere Old ones, new ones, thick and thin ones. They were all notebooks- binders and spirals, even envelopes stuffed with paper.
“Are these…?”
“All my dreams, yes.”
He moved into the room after her and picked p a large red one at the top of the stack nearest him. He opened it. Before she pulled it away from him, he saw the words Miami, 1972- June to August.
“Not for you to read. No one reads them while I am alive.”
“Then why did you…?”
“Bring you here?”
“Yes.”
“Because I have been looking for years for someone who is worthy to keep my dreams after I’m gone.”
“And this is me? How do you know this.”
“Are things you just know.”
“But I cant even touch them until you die?”
“Won’t be too long now. I was beginning to think no one was coning maybe I needed to put most of them in first.”
“These must be a life’s reading here.”
“And a life’s writing. This is what I will connect up forever, young one.”
“How so? I don’t even know you.”
“You’ll know when you get my dreams. And then you will start your own dream library, and you will leave all of yours and all of mine to someone else, starting a never ending chain of dreamers- of dreams.”
“Why are you the first?”
“Som many questions. How do you know I was the first one?”
“Wouldn’t you have all the dreams of the other dreams of all the other dreamers?”
“Who says I don’t?”
“You’re quite a mystery.”
“Now you go. You will not come back until the dreams are yours.”
He left quietly. She went to the closet and pulled out many boxes. She began to put the many books into the boxes, pausing to read her favorite ones.

2 November, 2003
This was inspired by the fact that i have remembered at least one dream every night for about 6 months at the time of the writing, and about 13 months as of this posting.